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Monday, September 12, 2011

Happy Monday everyone.

Today let’s look at soy milk. I know it doesn’t sound very Malaysian, but believe it or not, cold sweetened soy milk is a favourite thirst quencher. In fact, the drink is so popular it’s sold commercially as a bottled drink and even in tetra paks the same way you’d buy juice over here in Oz. It’s known locally as Tau chui (sounds like Tao chewy), and I think the literal translation of that is “bean water”.

And bean water it certainly is. The process of making this soybean drink is pretty simple and straightforward. It involves soaking the beans, grinding them to a pulp, then cooking the pulp with water. This mix is then drained and the resulting “milk” is collected. I could give you instructions, but I found a very well detailed post over here at Just hungry which I followed and it yielded perfect results. I used 1 cup soybeans, blended with 1.5 cups water and an additional 4.5 cups water to cook. Usually, we add some pandan leaves to add a bit of fragrance (soymilk does smell a tad strange), but since I didn’t have any, I added the tiniest drop of vanilla extract, just enough to give it a nice scent without overpowering the drink.

The dried beans

The soybean drink can be served either hot or cold, plain or unsweetened. I prefer the sweetened version. To do this, just make up a simple sugar syrup (1 part sugar to 1part water), and add a couple of teaspoons of this syrup to the bottom of a glass before adding the milk. Stir well and serve.

Fresh soybean milk tastes a hundred times better than the commercial variety you can find sold as a cow’s milk alternative in the supermarkets here. I’ve tried a couple of those and just don’t like them. At all.

Oops - make sure you use a large pan as suggested by Maki of Just Hungry.

However, as the homemade version contains no preservatives, it needs to be used up fairly quickly. Using a tip found on the same "how-to" post at Just Hungry, I made mango smoothies (fresh soybean milk, fresh mango, a little sugar syrup and scoop of vanilla ice-cream) and the MCs absolutely adored these. It doesn’t taste as creamy as ones made using cow’s milk, but I prefer it that way.

I learnt something new. The stuff left over after draining is called okara, and can be used to add to cooking.

Have a great start to the week :).

We are still on holidays and hopefully this auto-post when up without a hitch.

I’ll be your host for the next Muhibbah Malaysian Monday round-up, a monthly event that is co-hosted with Suresh from 3 Hungry Tummies. Please send all your entries for September to me at its(dot) sharon(at) gmail(dot) com. Please don’t worry if you don’t hear back from me immediately when you send an email. I’ll be checking intermittently.

My mom used to do this when I was younger, but she got progressively lazier since there's this awesome soy milk stand near my home. I still remember the taste of the fresh soybean milk though - slightly burnt and so rich!

Fresh soybean milk has been a total revelation to me here in China, having only ever tasted the refrigerated 'soymilk in a carton' version in Australia. I like it hot and unsweetened in winter, with a steaming bowl of congee and a pile of pickles. Best breakfast ever!

MY BF will only drink soy or almond milk. I love that you posted this because I could surprise the heck out of him by making it from scratch, thanks to you. I made almond milk for him a few months ago, and that floored him, so I'm excited to his reaction to this!! :)